jury held in one hand the
rights of the prisoners, and, to a certain extent, it held in the
other hand the good name and the peace of the community in which it
lived. This was a responsibility already great, but which increased
in direct proportion to the enormity of the offense under
consideration. Yet no responsibility could be greater than that of
the twelve men before him. Only a few months before, Patrick Henry
Cronin, a citizen of the State of Illinois, a resident of the great
metropolis, living in fancied security and within the very shadow
of the court-house in which they were now sitting, was lured from
his home upon a mission of murder. Fired by professional zeal,
moved by the instincts of humanity which his choice of a profession
indicated, he rushed to the assistance of a suffering man.
Suspecting nothing, he went out, armed, as it were, with the very
instruments of his skill and profession, and then rushed into the
slaughter-house prepared for his reception and death.

Then, as if the white face of death itself was not sufficient to
satiate human hatred, his body was subjected to the indignity and
ignominy of burial in a filthy sewer. This man, to whom sacred
burial in consecrated ground was a right to which he always looked
forward, was thrown into a sewer. The crime was singular in its
brutality, but its brutality was not its startling feature. Why was
Dr. Cronin slain? Because he was condemned to die. Condemned for
what? For no offense within the laws of the State of Illinois.
Condemned and executed by whom? By a tribunal that was unlawfully
constituted, a tribunal that was at the same time, accuser,
witness, judge and executioner. It was a tribunal which within
itself in the light of day, which existed upon a territory of the
State to whom its members hold allegiance, a tribunal which was
treasonable to the laws of the State, the juries were called upon
to execute and to the laws of the State whose protection it had a
right to claim. Who could have dreamed that such a thing was
possible in the State of Illinois? Who could say that six months
from that day he could not be repeated in the State of Illinois.
Only the twelve men who were trying the case. That was their
responsibility, for their oath in the case was to well and truly